


Finding a Way To Forgive (Or Clint Barton Finally Has His Say)

by Telaryn



Series: The Hero and The Bad Boy [13]
Category: Leverage, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Awkward Conversations, Banter, Crossover, Crossover Pairings, Emotional Baggage, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Flirting, Gen, Hospitals, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Miscommunication, Reconciliation, SHIELD, Serious Injuries
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-08
Updated: 2013-03-08
Packaged: 2017-12-04 16:18:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,581
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/712658
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Telaryn/pseuds/Telaryn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Epilogue to <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/708205">Setting Priorities</a> - Clint learns about Quinn's assault on Shelley and manages to confess his sins, broker peace, and clear up an error in the official record, all while seriously injured and from his hospital bed.  The one thing he <i>can't</i> do is live up to what Quinn would like to do in order to celebrate everything returning somewhat to normal.</p><p>Luckily Quinn is a patient and understanding boyfriend.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Finding a Way To Forgive (Or Clint Barton Finally Has His Say)

**Author's Note:**

> This is the epilogue to Part 11 of the series. I had to write it as a separate piece, because the feels in Part 11 literally overwhelmed me.

Clint Barton had always been a notoriously bad patient – ironic really, considering the number of times he deliberately put himself in the line of fire and had something go spectacularly wrong on him. No matter what sort of injuries he was dragged in with, three or four days into his recovery and he would inevitably be terrorizing the staff and demanding to be allowed to go back to his quarters.

This time was different – and not just because his quarters were currently half a world away in Avengers Tower. This time he didn’t fight the drugs that kept him still and quiet, hovering on the edge of unconsciousness most of the time. He believed the doctors when they told him how close he’d come to dying, because the truth of their words were mirrored in Quinn’s expression whenever he thought Clint wasn’t looking.

Clint had people in his life who he was pretty sure would mourn when he finally met his match. Of course there were people who would celebrate, but overall it was just nice reaching a point in his life where his existence mattered to people. Having somebody – especially somebody like Quinn – be so deeply afraid at the idea of him dying though; Clint had never in his life imagined mattering that much to anyone.

It was a heady responsibility, and he didn’t want to take it for granted.

The other benefit he reaped from cooperating with his doctors was that when it came time to start pushing Quinn to take care of _himself_ , Quinn was more inclined to listen. The victories had been small at first – Quinn agreeing to take a short walk and have some food under the guise of giving somebody else a chance to visit with Clint.

Close to a week passed though, before Clint was able to convince him to leave long enough to get a proper shower and a nap without one of the others being around to take his place at Clint’s bed side. “I’m not going anywhere – I promise,” he’d said finally, reaching out to lay his uninjured hand on Quinn’s arm. “Go sort yourself out.” It was a mark of how far he’d pushed his own limits that for once Quinn couldn’t muster the energy to argue with him.

Sleep crowded in on him almost as soon as Quinn had left the room. The doctors were starting to talk about limited physical therapy, and he supposed they would have to dial down his painkillers then. Until that point though, sometimes just focusing on someone long enough to hold a conversation was more than he could manage.

He had no clear idea how long he’d been dozing when a light rapping on the door frame to his room woke him up. “You game for some company?”

The voice wasn’t immediately familiar, but Clint felt a jolt of energy go through him when he recognized the face. “Absolutely! Get in here!”

It was the first time he’d really seen Shelley since the explosion, although he had scattershot memories of the other man’s voice urging him to hang on as he was pulled free of the wreckage, and flashes of dark brown eyes filled with worry. He’d asked Natasha during her first visit if she knew Shelley’s status, but all she’d been able to tell him was that he’d come through without a scratch.

Now that he could see for himself, Clint quickly figured out that Natasha’s assessment was purely physical in nature. Shelley was uncharacteristically subdued, his shoulders hunched with with what looked like worry. “I won’t stay long,” he said hastily. “I saw Quinn leave though, and…” He gave a shaky laugh. “Good to see you.”

“Good to be seen,” Clint said automatically. “What’s wrong?” His brow furrowed as he sorted through all the possible reasons for Shelley’s radical change in behavior. “Is somebody blaming _you_ for me getting hurt?”

“Nearly getting killed you mean?” Shelley took a few steps closer to Clint’s bedside, but made no move to take the chair Quinn had left behind. “Did they tell you how touch and go it was?”

Clint snorted softly. “They didn’t have to.” He paused. “Thanks, by the way. I’ve got a pretty good idea how much I owe you for saving my life.”

Shelley looked uncomfortable again. “You would have done the same.” He hugged his arms across his chest, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. “Fucking rocket launcher. Who’d have thought, huh?”

“Yeah,” Clint echoed, still trying to figure out what he was missing. A long moment of silence stretched between them. “Shelley man, what’s going on? Nat said you weren’t hurt.”

Before Shelley could answer him, there was movement at the door. Quinn entered too quickly – his posture alert, his eyes scanning the room for something. _For someone…_ Clint realized as Quinn focused on Shelley and froze.

Shelley’s hands had immediately gone up in a defensive posture. “You said we were good,” he told Quinn, taking a step backwards. “You gave me your word if he lived we were good.”

“I take it you’ve met,” Clint said dryly, studying Quinn and trying to figure out any other reason besides the obvious for his lover to be acting like this. Once upon a time, Jonah Quinn had been a man whose conscience had fallen into disuse. He had a very specific skill-set, and like Natasha – one of the few people he nominally called his friend – he really hadn’t cared much what he used his skills for, as long as the person asking was capable of paying his asking price.

A lot of people had been willing to pay for many years – a former enemy of Clint’s being one of them.

It was that man – the man Clint had hated himself for falling in love with – who stood at the foot of his bed now, ignoring Clint in favor of keeping his eyes fixed on the young SHIELD agent.

Shelley was the one who finally broke the strained silence, glancing over his shoulder at Clint. Even then, Clint noticed that he wouldn’t fully take his eyes off Quinn. “We’ve met. Fury thought I should be the one to brief everybody on what happened.”

 _And I’m guessing that went brilliantly,_ Clint thought, pieces falling into place and making a picture he would rather have never seen. “Quinn,” he called, shifting his attention back to his lover. There was no response – Clint might as well not have been in the room. “Quinn, look at me,” he repeated, ignoring the growing pain in his chest as he raised his voice. “ _What did you do?_ ”

Quinn finally turned to look at him, and Clint’s uninjured hand fisted involuntarily in his sheets, eyes widening at his expression. He’d retreated someplace far inside himself, beyond the stillness Clint usually saw whenever they were discussing something important. This was the monster looking at him now – the man Quinn had spent so many months warning him about. “I fed him his gun.”

The number of painkillers he was on left him with a constant low-grade nausea, but Quinn’s revelation tightened Clint’s stomach to the point where he really thought for a moment he was going to throw up. He swallowed hard. “Why would you do that?”

The pale eyes he loved so much were suddenly the eyes of a stranger. “He wasn’t hurt. They wouldn’t tell me if you were going to live or die, and he was standing there perfectly whole. It wasn’t right.”

“It’s fine,” Shelley interjected, a note of genuine fear in his voice that Clint had never heard before. Whatever Quinn had done, whatever threats he’d made – Shelley had believed them. “Honestly Clint – we were all worried about you. Quinn hadn’t slept…I smarted off…it’s all good, really.”

“Shelley, stop,” Clint said, shifting his attention to his former partner. “Just stop for one second, please.” Everybody had been encouraging him to stay focused on getting better, so he’d been doing his best to ignore the few hints about what might have happened that had been dropped in his hearing range. Now he was going to _have_ to deal with the fact that things outside his room were apparently far more serious than he’d been allowed to understand. “Did you tell him about what happened?”

Before Shelley could say anything, Quinn spoke. “Fury told me.” He paused, waiting for Clint to digest the news. “ _After_ I attacked him.” He gestured at Shelley with a small jerk of his head. “He said Shelley tried to seduce you.” His hands started clenching and unclenching; Clint tried to slide himself up to more of a sitting position – hoping that it would make him feel less vulnerable – but he had to give it up when the pain in his chest briefly overwhelmed the morphine in his system.

“Use your button.” Quinn’s voice was still unnaturally calm, but Clint was strangely relieved to see the flash of panic in his eyes in response to Clint’s pain. Nodding weakly, he pressed the button he’d been given and closed his eyes for a moment, letting go as a fresh dose of relief flooded his system.

Shelley was looking from Quinn to Clint and back again, like something about the conversation wasn’t unfolding the way he’d expected it to. “You know he refused then, right?” he asked finally, looking at Quinn. “He said no.”

The ex-mercenary shrugged. “Doesn’t matter,” he said; his eyes on Clint again. “In my heart I don’t believe he would ever cheat on me. But,” he hastened to add before either of them could say anything, “I learned something about myself sitting here praying for him to wake up.” His expression warmed, and Clint felt his own tension at Quinn’s behavior start to ease.

“I learned,” Quinn went on, “that having Clint alive and whole is more important to me than whatever did or did not happen between the two of you.”

Clint was so overwhelmed that he couldn’t say anything for a long moment. “I was tempted,” he admitted finally. It was nothing more than he’d already planned on confessing, although in his imagination it had just been he and Quinn having the conversation. _Maybe it’s for the best that you’re here to see this though,_ he thought, glancing at Shelley. “It was starting to feel like my old life, and then we kissed, and…”

“You’re not hearing me,” Quinn said. His hands curled around the railing at the foot of Clint’s bed. “I told you it doesn’t matter. Whatever you did, whatever you might have thought about doing…”

“I heard you,” Clint said, cutting him off. “Now I need you to hear me. We kissed, and when he offered I was tempted…but the thought…” He swallowed hard against a sudden tightness in his throat. “The thought of betraying you, of betraying _us_ \- I couldn’t do it.” He huffed out a quiet breath. “I couldn’t be that person.”

A smile finally softened Quinn’s own expression. It was small, but it warmed Clint straight through to his soul. “I never thought I’d say this Clint Barton, but we need to have a little less excitement in our lives.”

“And that definitely sounds like my cue to leave,” Shelley interjected. He faced Quinn, and Clint was grateful to see a good deal of the tension gone from his posture. “Quinn – again, I’m sorry we had to meet like this, and I’m sorry I shot my mouth off about you being the reason Clint was off his game. Even if it was true, it wasn’t cool of me to bring it up like that.”

Clint blinked, stunned momentarily into silence. “You stupid son of a bitch,” he said at last, staring at Shelley. “Is _that_ what you people told him?”

If it hadn’t been more effort than he was really capable of making, Clint would have executed a spectacular facepalm at the look on Shelley’s face. “Hey Clint – I know it wasn’t cool of me to lay blame like that, but facts are facts.”

“Your facts are bullshit,” Clint spat, cutting him off. His head was starting to spin slightly – he really wasn’t physically up to being this angry, but on top of everything else he couldn’t believe that they were laying what happened off on him; saying that Quinn was a distraction, a liability to him being able to do his fucking job. “ _You_ were the reason I fucked up, Shelley,” he said, hitching himself up higher in the bed. “I took the one chance I had to get off that roof and wasted it making sure _you_ were safe.”

“I haven’t worked with you in _years_ ,” Clint went on, seeing the confusion on Shelley’s face. “I had no clear idea what you would do in a situation like that. If I’d been out there with Nat I would have taken the leap, because I can trust her to handle herself and leave me to handle myself.”

“But…” Shelley stammered, clearly having trouble with the concept, “I was fine.” He gestured between them. “Obviously.”

“ _I didn’t know that,_ ” Clint said, speaking slowly and deliberately. “You can’t put two people together on less than twenty-four hours’ notice and trust that they’ll always make the right call if things go south. The fuck-up is mine…I own that. I should have trusted you, I made the wrong call, okay.” He gestured at himself lying in the bed. “Clearly I’m paying for it. But,” he said, silencing Shelley with an upraised hand, “I fucked up because I was worried about _you_. Not because I was distracted by _him,_ got it?”

Shelley had begun chewing on his lower lip. “Got it,” he said quietly, nodding at Clint. He sighed. “Guess I’d better go amend my report then.”

“Wait just one more second,” Clint said, shifting so he could see Quinn again. “I’m going to ask you to do something you aren’t going to want to do.” Quinn’s smile twitched, and Clint realized that he already knew what Clint was going to ask him. “It’s important to me though – important enough that I’m willing to play the invalid card with you if I have to.”

Quinn shook his head. “No need.” Looking at Shelley he said calmly, “I’m sorry. It looks like there was a lot of miscommunication on every level, but regardless of that I shouldn’t have attacked you like I did. It was…out of line.” Clint snorted softly at the gross understatement, but Shelley clearly appreciated the gesture.

“We’re good man,” he said, nodding at Quinn. “Forgiven, forgotten and hopefully never repeated.” He grinned mischievously at Clint. “I like him.”

Clint rolled his eyes. “You wouldn’t last two days with him. Go set the record straight for me, and come back later for a real visit, okay?”

When Shelley was finally gone, Quinn stayed at the foot of the bed, staring up at him. “You know, if you weren’t still on injured reserve I’d be all over you right now.” He licked his lips, and Clint felt his body tighten pleasurably in response to the heat in Quinn’s eyes.

Sadly it was all he could physically manage, with his injuries still fresh and too numerous to catalogue. Mentally though…”Get over here,” he said, glancing at the chair by his bedside, “and tell me everything you’re thinking of right now.” 

He grinned wickedly as Quinn hurried around the bed to take the offered seat. “And talk slow.”


End file.
